


i shall not live in vain

by redskiesandsailboats



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Andreil, How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lots of flowers, M/M, Self-Indulgent, Violence, andrew waxes poetic about neil's eyes at any given moment, like really really self-indulgent, soft?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25927522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redskiesandsailboats/pseuds/redskiesandsailboats
Summary: The first time flowers had bloomed on his skin, when he was about six or seven, his mother had taken one look and brushed them off his face like they were poison. He had only caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, a burst of sickening pink petals in the vague shape of a hand across his left cheekbone, before she reached him.(Or, a soulmates AU in which when your soulmate gets hurt, flowers bloom in the same spot on you body.)
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 44
Kudos: 435





	i shall not live in vain

Nathaniel sat under the grand staircase and watched as flowers bloomed across the palms of his hands, the skin of his knees. They were tiny. Delicate blue petals no bigger than the freckles that stubbornly dusted his arms, his neck, his cheeks, but somehow so very vibrant and alive, alive, alive. 

Nathaniel wondered what it was this time. Maybe an accident, like falling off a bike, or tripping down the stairs. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe there was pushing, yelling, screaming involved. He wondered if it was a scrape or a cut or just a bruise. 

He hoped it didn't hurt for long. 

The first time flowers had bloomed on his skin, when he was about six or seven, his mother had taken one look and brushed them off his face like they were poison. He had only caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, a burst of sickening pink petals in the vague shape of a hand across his left cheekbone, before she reached him. 

He had asked what it was, but she wouldn't tell him; she never did tell him, actually. 

"It's not your pain, Abram," his mother said, "It's not yours. Ignore it." 

He found it very, very hard to ignore.

“Oh Junior, you don't know what this is?" Lola asked him, laughter in her voice that didn't belong with the red painted fingernail she was dragging up his arm, trailing through the tangle of violets that had erupted on his shoulder, across his back. "This is your soulmate," she whispered in his ear, plucking a flower and twirling between her thumb and forefinger. "It means they're bleeding." 

Nathaniel didn't need his mother to tell him to rip them out after that. 

When he was eight the flowers appeared more regularly. 

Every time they were different, but they bloomed in great swaths. A carpet of chrysanthemums across his back one day, and a flower crown of honeysuckle in his hair the next. Sometimes cherry blossoms dotted his arms like fingerprints, other times he woke with babies breath climbing up his rib cage. 

When he was about ten, the flowers stopped growing for a short while. Perhaps he should have felt relieved, but all he felt was anticipation. He found himself obsessively checking his arms and legs and back for any sign of color, any sign of life. 

Then when he was twelve, the flowers came back in earnest, blooming from his knees and elbows and knuckles. Nathaniel entertained himself with visions of riding bikes and falling off, climbing trees and holding on too tight, swinging as high as you could on the swing set and jumping off if you dared. There was innocence in his imagination that he hoped with all his heart would be translated to truth for his soulmate. 

Of course, innocence was not something that could be held onto, only lost, and when he was thirteen the flowers started to grow from only one spot. 

Suddenly daisies would bloom in perfect, nauseating lines across his forearms. Row upon row of white petals and yellow centers, and Nathaniel could do nothing but watch as he sat in the passenger seat of one stolen car after another, the world racing and blurring past.

The daisies grew for years, leaving a garden on his skin that he had only to brush off, and a graveyard of scars on his soulmate’s, surely. The sight made him sick, but under that, there was an all consuming dread, a worry that one day the rows of daisies would disappear, and no flowers would ever bloom across his skin again. 

Nathaniel only hoped that the blood he spilled grew into the most beautiful flowers for his soulmate to find and remember that Nathaniel was alive, alive, alive. 

*

Andrew Doe sat on the rusty swing set a block away from his most recent foster home and waited as the sun gave up its seat in the heavens to the stars for the marigolds to stop blooming on his collarbone. 

He kept his head tipped to the sky, entertaining himself with thoughts of falling up, up, up into the endless nothing of space. 

He didn’t wonder if it hurt, or if it bled or burned or bruised. He didn’t let himself imagine sympathetic hands or held back tears. 

He didn’t let himself wonder what kind of life caused cornflowers and geraniums to erupt all over his stomach and chest in violent lines. 

He didn’t think of anything at all. 

When he woke at eleven to find heather tangled in the soft hair behind his ear, he didn’t think of stitches or ice packs, or how much that must have bled, he simply ripped it out and forgot about it. 

When he discovered a single rose blooming stubbornly on his left shoulder, he picked it and threw it into the middle of the street to be trampled, crushed. 

When an entire patch of daffodils appeared from his right shoulder to his left hip, Andrew watched them grow in the darkness of his room in the middle of the night and brushed them off when he could no longer stand the sight. 

He told himself soulmates were pointless and stupid. What use did he have for someone else's pain in the form of flowers? He had enough of his own.  
They would never find each other; Andrew didn’t think he could live long enough. So why did he need that reminder? 

The only time he let himself think about it, really think about it, was when he was holding a razor to the sensitive skin of his wrists for the first time. 

He let himself wonder, just that once, what kind of flowers would bloom on his soulmates wrists. 

*

The first time Andrew Minyard saw Neil Josten bleed, they were complete strangers. 

Eden’s Twilight was oppressive and overwhelming at best, at worst it contained the twin brother Andrew had only just met and the cousin he didn’t ask for. At eighteen, Andrew had successfully rid himself of all things save for rage and an obsessive need to keep what was his within arms reach. 

He had thrown himself over the metaphorical edge long ago and now he was just plummeting, waiting for impact, refusing to close his eyes but also refusing to grab onto anything to slow his fall. 

After growing tired of waiting for his own flesh and blood to try to understand him even a little bit, Andrew turned on a heel and walked out of the back door behind the kitchen of Eden’s, already pulling a cigarette and lighter out of his pocket. He was met with a cry of pain that was quickly silenced followed by the smack of someone’s head hitting the brick wall. 

He was moving before he could think about it, following the sound to the shadows where he found a boy twisting just outside the reach of a much larger man. The boy wasn’t quite fast enough, bringing his arm up to catch the glint of a blade before it met his chest. He didn’t make a sound, only gritted his teeth and pushed back with all of his strength.  
Andrew didn’t wait to see more, grabbing the man from behind, dragging him away from the boy and bringing his own blade up to the man’s exposed throat. 

“Don’t give me another reason to let you bleed out right here,” he warned. The man growled and Andrew tightened his grip, drawing a thin line of red and effectively silencing him. “Drop the knife.” The man dropped the knife. Andrew didn’t give him a chance to do or say anything else, bringing the butt of his own knife to the back of his head and watching with indifference as he slumped to the ground. 

When he turned back to the boy he was up and leaning against the far wall, cradling his hurt arm to his chest and watching Andrew like he was going to turn his knife on him. Andrew took a step towards him and he flinched, making Andrew freeze. 

Slowly, like he was trying no to spook an animal, Andrew sheathed his knife and held up his hands. The boy’s posture didn’t change, if anything, he looked more wary, ready to bolt in a split second, his blue eyes flashing. 

Those eyes.

“How far are you planning to make it before you pass out from the blood loss?” Andrew asked, nothing in his voice to betray the fire that was dancing in his fingertips, the adrenaline eating away at his pulse. 

The boy opened his mouth as if to protest but Andrew cut him off before he could. 

“Don’t answer that. You have two options: one, you can come to my car and let me drive you to the hospital.” If it was possible, the boy shrunk in on himself even more at that, just as Andrew suspected. “Or, you can come inside with me and use the first aid kit in the back.” With each option he held up a finger, waving them around just slightly. The boy’s eyes flick to his hand and back to his face. “Those are your only options.” 

A moment passed before the boy answered, but Andrew would have waited him out forever if he had to. 

“No hospitals,” the boy said, and his voice was somehow soft and firm at the same time. 

Andrew nodded, accepting that, and moved to open the back door, holding it until the boy inched forward and inside. The music from the club was muffled and pulsing, but the sound of the staff laughing as they took breaks and washed dishes was clear; the boy flinched away from it, so Andrew led him into one of the very back rooms, telling him to stay put while he searched for the first aid kit. 

When he came back to find the boy still sitting on one of the large storage crates, he almost couldn’t hide his surprise. 

The boy looked up upon his entrance, his eyes filling with blatant distrust and barely concealed panic. When Andrew took a step closer, his entire body tensed and he grit out one word: “Don’t.”

Once again, Andrew froze. 

He eyed the blood soaking through the sleeve of the boy’s grey sweatshirt and held out the first aid kit without taking a step closer. The boy snatched it away from him before he could move anywhere else, tearing it open like it was going to disappear in his hands. 

Andrew watched in silence as he cleaned the shallow wound and wrapped it with gauze. The work was sloppy, and his hands were shaking ever so slightly, but he kept taking deep, measured breaths, flicking his eyes up to Andrew every once in a while to make sure he hadn't moved. 

Andrew raised an eyebrow at him the third time they made eye contact. The boy just glared at him. 

When he finally finished, neither of them moved. 

“What are you waiting for?” Andrew asked finally, letting just a drop of amusement bleed into his voice and gesturing to the closed door behind him. “The door’s right there.”  
The boy glared at him again, but lifted his chin and climbed down from the crate, leaving the first aid kit where it was and never taking his eyes off Andrew as he stepped around him to get to the door. 

Andrew didn’t turn to watch him leave, waiting for the door to click shut again before moving. 

It wasn’t until later that night, in the weak light of his bathroom provided by the only working light bulb, that he pulled off his armbands to find crushed foxgloves in the exact place the cut had been on the boy’s arm. 

*

It was almost two years before Andrew saw that boy again, and he almost didn’t recognize him. 

Instead of the dark brown hair and thin frame, he had deep auburn curls and no longer walked like he was two steps away from bolting, but Andrew would remember those eyes anywhere. He couldn’t forget them if he wanted to. 

Unbidden, the image of crumpled foxgloves rose to his mind, but he banished it to the back of his mind. 

It didn’t mean anything. 

People lived their entire lives without ever finding their soulmates. People found their soulmates only to discover that their soulmate’s soulmate was a different person. People searched for their soulmate for years only to discover they had died long ago. 

Fate was cruel, and the world had never even tried to be kind to Andrew Minyard, so he didn’t want to know. 

This mysterious boy infront of him wasn’t his soulmate, no one was. After all, how could one have a soulmate if one didn’t have a soul?

Andrew was just about to turn away when none other than Kevin Day, the main cause of most of Andrew’s headaches, walked out of the coffee shop Andrew had been aiming for and handed the boy a cup of something hot. 

Andrew thought maybe fate wasn’t just cruel, but also had a sense of humor. 

“Andrew!” Kevin called before he could get more than a step away. Andrew stopped and cursed softly, schooling his features into that of bored indifference before turning around to face them. 

“Day,” he replied evenly, not moving a step from where he was, letting them come to meet him. “I hope you don’t make it a habit of recruiting rabbits for your sorry soccer team.” He didn’t look away from Kevin as he said it, only turning to the boy after taking in Kevin’s look of pure confusion. 

For a moment, the boy looked just as confused as Kevin did, then Andrew caught the exact moment he figured it out. His eyes widened and his mouth made a soft oh shape, and for a split second, he looked like he had in the alley, panicked and ready to bolt. Then he blinked and the look was gone. 

“Oh,” he said out loud, and Andrew found his voice hadn’t changed much. It was still soft and just as lovely, though not laced with pain this time. He didn’t think about how the boy’s voice was so familiar, when he had spoken all of three words to Andrew.

“There you are,” Andrew said, tilting his head ever so slightly. “Are you real this time?” he asked. Kevin made an indignant sound beside them but Andrew didn’t look at him, holding up a hand to stop either from speaking, “Don’t answer that.” 

“Why do you keep asking questions if you don’t want me to answer them?” the boy asked, and oh Andrew was fucked. 

“Because I don’t trust you to give true answers.” 

“Wait,” Kevin said, sticking his hands between them and waving them around to get them to look at him. The boy complied, Andrew didn’t. “Wait, do you two know each other?”

“No,” they both said at the same time. Kevin looked even more confused. 

“What-”

“Do you play?” the boy interrupted, looking back to Andrew. “Soccer,” he added at the end, unnecessarily. 

“No,” Kevin and Andrew said at the same time.

“But he should,” Kevin added at the end, unnecessarily.

“No I should not,” Andrew replied. “I don’t owe you shit. If anything, you owe me.”

“It’s not about owing,” Kevin sputtered, frustrated beyond measure, like they hadn’t had this conversation a thousand times. “It’s about talent. Talent that you are wasting-” Kevin cut himself off, waving his hands around some more. One of these days he was going to take someone out and not even notice. “But that’s not the point. The point is, how the hell do you know each other?”

“We don’t,” the boy said, before Andrew could reply. 

“Neil,” said Kevin. 

“Kevin,” Neil said back. 

“Andrew,” Kevin tried, but Andrew only shrugged at him. He was done with this conversation, and in desperate need of some very sweet coffee. 

Andrew wasted no time in sending a mocking two fingered salute Neil’s way and walking around them to the coffee shop, ignoring Kevin calling his name. 

If the image of Neil’s cornflower blue eyes followed him around for the rest of the day, then it was nobody's business but Andrew’s. 

*

The third time Neil Josten had the pleasure of running into Andrew Minyard, it was on the empty bleachers overlooking the empty soccer field after practice. 

Neil stayed behind to run stairs, to try to get rid of some of his ever present, ever lingering anxiety, and found Andrew in the very top row. He was leaning his elbows on his knees and watching Neil with a bored expression and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. 

Neil reached the top row and stopped in front of Andrew, not even out of breath yet. Andrew just looked at him. 

“Hi,” Neil said dumbly, for lack of anything better. 

“Hi,” Andrew said back. “You just had practice.” 

Neil furrowed his brow in confusion. “Yeah?”

“Why are you still running?”

Neil opened his mouth to reply before shutting it again as he caught the double meaning of Andrew’s words. He rubbed at the grass burn on his palms he had earned at practice that day and wondered idly what kind of flowers had shown up on his soulmate’s skin, whoever it might be. 

“I’m not,” said Neil finally, and Andrew raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m not,” Neil insisted, taking a seat sideways on the row just below Andrew, stretching a leg out long ways, and leaning over until his muscles burned. His eyes caught on what looked like ripped up petals at Andrew’s feet. “There’s nothing left to run from,” he said, after a moment. He wasn’t sure he believed himself. 

Andrew scoffed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pathological liar?”

Neil looked up at him to find he was looking out across the field. Andrew took a deep drag of his cigarette and all Neil could smell was roses.

“Plenty of people,” Neil replied. “But you don’t even know me.” 

“I don’t,” Andrew agreed, tearing his gaze away from the distance and settling it on Neil. “I thought I imagined you for a while,” he said abruptly.

Neil smirked at him, and he scowled. “I am not a hallucination.”

“You are a pipe dream.” 

“I’m not.” 

“You are,” Andrew insisted as he stood and stubbed his cigarette out on the bleacher seat. “Until next time, rabbit,” he said without turning around. 

Neil watched him until he got to the end of the stairs and disappeared around the corner. 

*

The first time Andrew let his iron tight control slip, Neil was sitting in the passenger seat of the Maserati, leaning against the door and chewing on his nails as he stared out the window at the sunset. 

He had called Andrew just as he was getting off work, saying, come get me, so Andrew had turned in the direction of Neil’s dorm instead of his apartment and done just that.

They didn’t speak as Andrew drove out of the city and away, away, away. As far as they could get in a couple hours. They didn’t speak as Andrew stopped at an overlook facing the ocean, and they didn’t speak as the sun made its slow descent to meet the horizon.

Finally, as the sky turned a violent shade of red, red like roses and poppies and calla lilies, red like spilled blood, Neil spoke. 

“Thank you,” he whispered. 

Andrew hummed in response. 

He heard Neil take in a deep breath, keeping his eyes resolutely on the sunset. He thought of the hyacinth he had found in the exact place Neil had scraped his knees after attempting to skateboard last week. He thought of the lavender he brushed off his hands in the same place Neil had grabbed for a hot pan of cookies without gloves because he was in the middle of a heated argument about soccer with Kevin the week before. He refused to look at his hands, afraid to find flowers twisting around his fingers because Neil kept picking at his hangnail. 

“Andrew,” Neil said, and finally, Andrew looked at him. The dying sunlight turned his hair to fire and cast his eyes to shadows, turning them the deepest blue imaginable. "Andrew can you--" Neil stopped, looked slightly nervous, and very frustrated with himself. He sat up off the car door and turned so he was mostly facing Andrew, those blue, blue eyes dancing across Andrew's face until they settled on his lips for a split second before bouncing up to his eyes. "Will you kiss me?" 

Of all the things Andrew expected Neil to say, that was not one of them. 

Andrew counted to three, and when he could breathe again, he said, "You don't swing." 

"I don't," Neil agreed, and then he licked his lips and Andrew stopped breathing again. "But I just," he stopped again, took a breath, "I want to try. If it's you- I want to try." 

Andrew took those words and shoved them to the back of his mind where he could take them out and study them in better lighting, when he could think properly. 

"I will not be your experiment," he said, because he had to. Because if he didn't he would do something incredibly stupid. 

"You're not- it's not-" Neil made a frustrated sound, digging his hands through his hair, and looking away, only to look back again. "Drew I-" 

Andrew grabbed him by the collar, pulling him in and stopping just before their lips brushed, effectively shutting him up. 

They were breathing each other's air, but Andrew wanted to be closer, and it scared him. He could feel Neil's pulse against his fingers where they rested on his neck, like a swarm of butterflies trying desperately, anxiously to be free, and Andrew wanted to climb inside Neil's chest so he could listen to the sound forever, to remind himself that Neil was alive, so alive, so that he wouldn't need flowers to tell him. 

"Yes or no?" he asked, because he couldn't lose control completely, not with this, not here, not now. 

But then Neil gave Andrew that tiny smile, the one only for Andrew, and he whispered yes, and it was all Andrew could do not to scream or die or push Neil away. 

Instead he pulled Neil the rest of the way and kissed him. 

Andrew was not prepared. 

He was not prepared for the tiny sigh that Neil pushed into his mouth, or for the aborted hand that clung to the sleeve of his jacket like it was Neil’s life line. He wasn’t prepared for the immediate breathlessness, or the intoxicating dizziness, and suddenly he was falling up, up, up into the nothingness above them. 

It terrified him, but most of all, it terrified him that he never wanted to come down. 

Andrew pulled away slowly, cautiously, to find Neil with his eyes still closed, his cheeks flushed and his lips pink like rose buds, like cherry blossoms, like wild peonies. 

When Neil finally did open his eyes, his pupils were blown wide and he laughed quietly, sounding triumphant and completely wrecked. 

“I think I was right,” he whispered. 

Andrew tightened his grip, bringing his other hand up to play with the curls at the nape of Neil’s neck, and he let himself fall into the blue of Neil’s eyes, kissing him again. And again. And again. And again. 

For once, he wasn’t thinking of flowers. 

*

The first time Neil Josten saw Andrew Minyard bleed, they were sitting in the top row of the bleachers, long after any sort of practice had ended, watching the completely underwhelming sunset and waiting for the stars to appear. 

They had run out of truths to share long ago, and having already swapped cigarettes and jackets, they sat in silence. 

Neil, for perhaps the first time in his life, didn’t mind. 

Andrew made him quiet. So very quiet. 

Next to him, Andrew started picking at the scabs decorating his knuckles, given to him by Renee during their last sparring session. Neil had already told him twice to stop, to let them heal, but Andrew had just given Neil a look and only stopped when Neil threatened to find colorful band aids to force on him. 

Now it seemed like he wasn’t even thinking about it, so Neil reached out to pull his hands away, only to freeze. 

There on Neil’s hand, in the exact place that a small bead of blood was forming where Andrew had just ripped off a scab, a forget-me-not sprouted and blossomed a delicate, heady blue. 

Andrew looked first at Neil’s face, to see why he had suddenly tensed up, then at their hands, pausing for a second before taking Neil’s hand in his own. 

He stared at it for a moment, and then two, and then unexpectedly, inexplicably, he lifted Neil’s hand up and brushed his lips across his knuckles. 

“Oh,” Neil whispered, unable to suppress the shiver that swept up his spine. Andrew looked at him through his eyelashes, his eyes dark and fathomless, and the breath got stuck in Neil’s lungs. 

“Shut up,” Andrew murmured before leaning in and pressing his lips to Neil’s gently, so gently. 

“Oh,” Neil said again, hovering his other hand over Andrew’s armbands and seeing rows upon rows of daisies, blooming and dying and blooming again. Andrew just looked at him steadily, reaching out to press two fingers to the scar of a bullet wound over Neil’s collar bone that Neil had yet to show him. 

The world spun and dipped and bent, and Andrew’s hand found its way to the back of his neck, grounding him, steadying him, and when everything finally stilled, Neil smiled. 

He smiled and pressed his forehead against Andrew’s, and quietly, reverently he said: “Found you.” 

Andrew let out a quiet breath that was as close to a laugh as Neil had ever heard, so he said it again, because he could, because it was true, as true as sunrise, Abram, death. 

“I found you.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi I've never done this before, but I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please let me know what you thought! Also this is barely edited bc if i didn't post it immediately after writing it, it would have never gotten posted. So. 
> 
> The title comes from an Emily Dickinson poem called "Part One: Life V"


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